THE E-WAY OF DOING BUSINESS

Social Media has plenty of benefits. We’ve spoken about this time and time again but how do you utilize social media to grow on online business? Teow Han Meng, Managing Director of Hanventure talks about the e-way of doing business.

E-COMMERCE NOWADAYS

E-COMMERCE EVOLUTION

INTRODUCTION OF E-COMMERCE

There are over 2 Billion Internet users in the internet world. Imagine the huge prospects you can obtain!

In working to help develop eCommerce websites for small businesses, I have seen a few successes and failures over the last 12 years. There are myriad articles to be read on how to start an eCommerce site, and how to market your eCommerce site, but there aren’t many articles on why NOT to start an eCommerce business!

Below are the first 5 reasons why you should think twice about starting up an eCommerce business. These are a few key areas that, in my experience, offer the greatest potential for failure if not properly identified. Conversely, if you excel in each area, more power to ya!

Google Wallet has officially arrived, and it's brought some new friends with it. Visa, Discover and American Express have each made moves to begin partnering with the mobile payment service, which is already supported by MasterCard. Google Wallet lets users of select Android phones pay for their purchases at select retailers simply by waving the phone in front of a sensor.

How to Help Customers to Find You - Getting Exposure for Your Small Business

No matter how wonderful your service or product is, you won't make any money if people don't know about it. There are a number of things you can do to get your name out there and many of them won't cost you anything but time. Here are 8 tips to get you started.

1) Get listed.

List the physical location for your business in Google Places and Yahoo. Use Google Product listings to drive shoppers to your website. Get listed on sites like Yelp!, Citysearch, Goby and Local.com so people can find your business and review it. Look for websites and mobile apps that search for businesses in your industry and add your location. There's Urban Spoon for restaurants, Hotspotr for wifi cafés, Mappy Hour for bars with happy hour specials, and A Day's Outing for daytrip destinations like wineries, antique shops and family fun spots. Other apps like Future Tap's Where To? pull their information from Google Places, so make sure your information is up-to-date.

2) Be creative.

When re-branding itself in 2009, Grasshopper Group used chocolate-covered grasshoppers to spread the word in a stunt that our office still remembers two years later. They got lots of television news coverage as TV anchors ate them on the air. Create your own newsworthy event, something so different that people just have to talk about it. Where do you get that great idea?

3) Listen to your customers.

Morton's Steakhouse got a mountain of publicity for the price of a steak dinner delivered to Peter Shankman as he arrived at Newark Airport. Someone at Morton's was paying attention when Shankman jokingly made a request on Twitter. At this writing, less than a week later, a Google search for "shankman steak" returned 187,000 results. Listen to your customers and respond. They will spread the word.

4) Use press releases when you have news.

PR Newswire and Business Wire are the industry leaders, and as such, may be beyond the budget of your small business, but they offer excellent advice on how to write and use press releases. PR.com and PRLog.org will distribute your press release for free, and PitchEngine.com allows one free pitch per thirty days. Star Reviews has a comparison chart and reviews of some free and paid press release distribution services. When you get press coverage, ask permission to post it on your website.

5) No news to report? Use HARO.

HARO (Help A Reporter Out) was created by Peter Shankman to connect reporters and bloggers with small businesses "to tell their stories, promote their brands and sell their products and services." How does it work? Suppose you own a restaurant. You sign up with HARO as a source, and they send you emails with queries from reporters. Choose the queries that you are qualified to answer: maybe for a business article about the economy's effect on restaurant patronage, or a management piece on how to motivate employees, or how to choose wine for a food or bridal magazine. When you are quoted as a source, your business name becomes newsworthy, and you become a recognized expert in your field.

6) Get connected: tweet, start a blog, get a Facebook page.

This is the digital age. You don't have to wait around for someone else to write about you. Whether you own a pizza parlor on Main Street or you make widgets, you can find something to blog about. Start by sharing advice and how-to tips. Basic service is free on Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr. Social media can give you exposure as well. A Facebook page gives your loyal customers an easy way to share you with their friends, and even street vendors are using Twitter to boost their business.

7) Use YouTube.

Businesses for whom ambiance is a big selling factor (like restaurants, bars, boutiques, catering halls) should take definitely advantage of this free platform to show potential patrons what they're missing. But no matter what your business is, you can find a way to leverage this powerful tool to your advantage. For example, a veterinarian shows how to brush a dog's teeth; a hairdresser demonstrates the proper way to use a straightener or curling iron; a pet store owner tells you how to clean the sand in your fish tank. Then put your videos on your Google Places Page.

8) Give something away.

Facebook Pages are perfect for this. Sprinkles Cupcakes posts daily giveaways on its Facebook page like this one: "What goes around comes around! First 50 people to whisper 'karma's sweet' at each Sprinkles get a free cupcake for you and for a friend!" Howard Rosenthal Photography gave away a free BFF Photo Shoot. Location-based services like Foursquare let you reward frequent customers with something special and build buzz around your business.

Whether you're blogging, tweeting, or helping a reporter out, the more places you can be found on the web, the better your chances of being found in the brick-and-mortar world.

URL Link: http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/getfound.htm

28 Aug 2011

10 REASONS WHY COMPANIES SHOULD START DOING BUSINESS ONLINE

1. NEW ECONOMY.

Internet has created a new economy, which by its explosive growth and sheer size already changed our perception of traditional way of doing business. Companies like Amazon and Ebay have successfully created domination on areas, where just few years ago traditional brick-and-mortar companies were kings. However, in order to be successful on the net, you don’t have to be a giant like them. Many small and mid-size companies managed to build online businesses quite profitably. In fact, studies show small and mid-size companies will be the main growth force of e-commerce in coming years.

2. INTERNET IS A PERFECT VENUE FOR BUSINESS.

In order to make a sale you need visitors to come to your shop. On the Internet, your shop could be only a click away from your prospective customers. With proper marketing your Internet storefront can have more buyers than you ever can get in a brick and mortar shop.

3. COMPANY’S IMAGE.

Whether you sell products or services online or not, in today’s world you have to have a corporate presence on the Internet. Otherwise, as you must have noticed that people simply don’t take your business seriously if you tell them that your company does not have a website. A nice corporate site definitely increases the image of a company especially if it has great product or service related content to go with.

4. PROVIDE BETTER CUSTOMER SUPPORT.

Customer accusation and retention is one of the key factors of business value chain. Thanks to Internet technology, business can provide customer support more effectively. This means better customer satisfaction and increase of profitability.

5. MAKE INFORMATION MORE EASILY AVAILABLE TO CUSTOMERS.

Just a couple of years ago, companies used to require days to deliver products or services update information to their customers. Things have changed since then. Today you can add or make any changes to your company and product related content virtually in a matter of couple of hours, publish on your site and share with the whole world.

6. CUT COSTS.

New technologies allow you to take virtually any part of your business online, that include supply chain management, billing, shipping, procurement etc. Streamlining these business processes through online systems will allow companies to cut costs significantly in almost every sphere of any business. For example: companies can reduce more than five percents of their maintenance, repair and operation costs by adopting e-business solutions. This five percent savings can turn into 50% of a company’s net profit!

7. ABILITY TO DO BUSINESS 24 HOURS.

How else you can continue making sales, while your stuffs are sleeping! The biggest advantages of online shops are that they are open 24 hours a day year round. Thanks to Internet off time, when your shop is generally closed, sales in some cases can be more than your regular business hours!

8. LOW START UP COSTS.

Building a web site does not require big investments. There are many low cost tools available today, which can help you create sites from very scratch. Many business portals allow you to build web sites from templates. For less than 100$/month you can have a full-fledged corporate e-business site with all e-commerce features!

9. YOU PHYSICAL PRESENCE COULD BE IN ANY LOCATION.

The World Wide Web allows you to do business from any part of the world. Your physical location, except for few cases is not that important since you conduct your business online.

10. GO GLOBAL

Thanks to Internet you can instantly become a global player. In fact, you don’t have to invest large sums of money to do this. There are literally hundreds of vertical and horizontal e-marketplaces available on the net. These marketplaces allow you for a nominal fee to get access to a large audience of prospective customers from all over the world. According to AMR Research more than 1,3$ trillion of good and services will flow through the B2B marketplaces. Who does not want a piece of this pie!

Because of the numerous Benefits of Shopping Online more and more people these days prefer Online Shopping over conventional shopping. There are many reasons why I think online shopping is the best too.